Carbine's weekly update brings a preview of one of WildStar's dungeons

Carbine's teased us with mentions of it in other weekly posts and posts on their Twitter account, but for this week's WildStar Wednesday, those of us who weren't at ArkShip EU will finally get a peek at Stormtalon's Lair, the first instance/dungeon announced for WildStar.

The dungeon starts off with a research team that was sent to explore a cave in Galeras and study some strange energy readings; they managed to send some reports back to the Exile Academy of Science, but they have not reported back from their mission. Based on the information that was sent back before the team went silent, you know going in that the Pell who inhabit this cave are Nexus natives who worship the elements and deities called "the Masters". Strangely though, for an otherwise primitive culture, they have an almost innate grasp of Eldan technology.

While you venture into the cave in search of the missing research team, Eldan technology, and anything else your Exile/Dominion bosses would like brought back to base, you'll fight your way through numerous Pell as you try to stop them from completing a ritual to make a Stormtalon - a winged abomination created through a mixture of magic and Eldan technology. In between you and Stormtalon are numerous Pell warriors driven by religious fervor and zeal to stop outsiders from interfering with the ritual, a Thundercall Invoker drawing his power from the Eldan artifact, the Focus of Air, and a massive air elemental named Aethros who will summon whirlwinds to smite the foes of the Pell. Assuming you clear through all of those hurdles, that just leaves the last one of defeating a "god" powered by magic and the might of Eldan technology - good luck!

If you'd like to read the rest of the description of Stormtalon's Lair, head over to the WildStar blog. I'm glad Carbine's starting to show us some dungeons finally. World questing's great and all, but many of us spend quite a chunk of our time in an MMO living in instances, especially at level cap. Now we just need to see how they integrate their combat/telegraph system with dungeon boss design. I'm still curious how that's going to look in a raid when you've got 20/40/however many people all putting down telegraphs as well as bosses and their adds putting more ground effects into the mix.

Michael "Ragar" Branham